


held the world for ransom

by iceberry



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Gen, Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Murder, Soulless Sam Winchester, The First Blade (Supernatural), gun-based symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28746534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceberry/pseuds/iceberry
Summary: Sam’s shot Dean before, to slow him down when Sam got a little too smart while he was still coming down from a kill with the Blade and Dean lost control, a quick bullet to the knee. And he’d do it again.Though, Sam realized driving away from the ER that night, blood still on the seats of the Impala and Dean seething through the pain meds in the backseat,He wouldn’t have actually killed me. He would never be able to kill Sammy.(dean has the mark of cain, sam doesn't have a soul. they keep on.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	held the world for ransom

**Author's Note:**

> absolutely obsessed with the fact that when you search for the "codependency" tag on here archive of our own is like "actually would you like to use the sam and dean specific codependency tag"

"Jesus Christ, could you have _been_ any messier?" Dean is still holding the First Blade when Sam gets to the address his brother texted him, standing over a body. His hand is still shaking, and there’s bullet casings on the floor a few feet from the body. There’s blood on the tile (whatever), the walls (come the fuck _on_ ), and the carpet a room over ( _looks like we're just burning the damn house down again_ , Sam thinks).

"Shut up," Dean says, and probably moving for the first time since the kill, grabs his wrist with his other hand, like he’s trying to stabilize it enough to let it go. He does this – freezes up after a kill, fighting against the Blade's thirst for _more more more_ – frequently, and it’s _really_ fucking annoying. 

"So was this guy a _total_ innocent, or did your conscience tell you to try and go after someone who's only _mostly_ innocent?" Sam asks, and starts opening kitchen cabinets to try and figure out what they have to work with this time. 

"Shut _up_ ," Dean repeats, and finally lets the blade clatter to the ground, shaking his hand out to the tune of hollow bone clanging on tile, like it'll make the urge to pick the blade back up slip out of his fingers. "He was being a sleazeball at the bar. Followed him here with a girl, let her go."

"Right, your chivalrous streak. How could I forget." He grits his teeth with the effort of not pointing out how stupid it was to let any potential witnesses go, let alone someone who he probably introduced himself to, but the Mark is still glowing under Dean’s skin. He’s shot Dean before, to slow him down when Sam got a little too smart while he was still coming down from a kill with the Blade and Dean lost control, a quick bullet to the knee. And he’d do it again, but this is already slowing them down; there’s a case three states over Sam wants to get to and the longer they stay here the higher the risk of someone catching them cleaning up Dean’s mess.

( _Though,_ Sam realized driving away from the ER that night, blood still on the seats of the Impala and Dean seething through the pain meds in the backseat, _He wouldn’t have actually killed me._ He had seen it in Dean’s eyes, and even if his brother claims his instincts are worse without a soul, he has 28 years of memories of looking at those eyes _with_ a soul to base the revelation on. Dean would have gotten close enough for Sam to feel his breath, feel the tremors in his hand from holding the blade tight enough to hurt, but he would never be able to kill _Sammy_. Souls.)

"Go look in the garage for gasoline," Sam says, turning away from the pathetic collection of bottles that passes as a “liquor cabinet” for the guy who’s now a body on the floor with a single, not even full, bottle of tequila in hand. It might set some curtains on fire, maybe a bedroom if they’re lucky with the carpet’s material, but it’s not enough to get the whole house ablaze fast enough for it to be gone before someone shows up.

Dean shoots him a look, one he still gives Sam sometimes when his little brother gives him orders, like he’s _shocked_ that yeah, without a soul, Sam doesn’t give a shit about the remnants of the Winchester Family Military Ranks. Sam looks back at him cooly, sees the hand that just let the blade go twitch a bit. “Go. I’ll wrap up the blade.” There’s clear effort on his face, but Dean complies and walks out to the garage, more willing to do what needs to be done anyways now that it’s draped in the guise of Sam doing him a favor.

The other Sam would probably comfort him, try to get him to put the blade down, maybe even try to _fix_ him. All of that is stupid, but the _worst_ , most pathetic part of it all is that despite the Mark, Sam knows that Dean still wants that from him, resents him for not being his sop of a baby brother.

Whatever.

He finds the leather they wrap it in behind the couch, and tucks the blade into his coat, careful to keep it secure.

Dean comes back with gasoline that’s clearly from the Impala and not from the garage, which is inconvenient since it’ll restrict how long they can drive before they need to stop, which means there’s a higher chance of leaving behind yet another witness who can point back down I-84 to them being in this town the night this man had his shoulder shot and throat slit in his own house. _Though they won’t know the throat was slit_ , Sam thinks, and pulls out his gun and shoots the corpse in the head.

“What the fuck?” Dean jumps, and Sam thinks he should feel some mild amusement at the way his brother’s spilled gasoline on his jeans, but mostly just wants to get out of here. The closest house out in the country is a mile away, but people have sharp ears. Sam’s not paranoid, but he sometimes thinks it might be a useful quality.

“No time to completely get rid of the body,” Sam points out, puts the gun back in his waistband and starts looking for flammable material to throw into a pile on top of the corpse and douse with tequila. “You know the drill, get the gasoline around the perimeter. You already shot the guy in the shoulder like a dumbass –”

“– he was trying to stop her from leaving –”

“– and cut his fucking _hand_ off, like a sociopath –” Sam pauses a second to see if Dean will try to throw a retort back for that part, but none comes, though Dean’s anger is clear in the way he holds his shoulders as he starts pouring the gasoline along the wall.

“– so there’s already ballistic evidence, this just makes it more confusing and hopefully completely obfuscates the fact that you slit his fucking throat.” _You psycho_ , Sam almost adds, but insults won’t make him feel any better and might slow them down if Dean can’t take it. No big loss. He dumps the tequila onto the couch cushions he’s piled on top of the body, and gets a lighter out.

The house goes up in flames easier than Sam expected it to, but then again, it really does go 50-50 with these cabins. You either get sturdy little shacks built with good, solid, wood, or shitty pre-fab sheds disguised as them. They got lucky this time.

They drive 14 hours straight. The case Sam found, probably a ghoul, is in Grand Junction, but they go West until Sam’s determined they’re far enough out to muddle any trail that would lead the authorities South to Colorado. 

“You gotta stop me, Sammy,” Dean mutters somewhere near Bozeman, voice heavy with what Sam guesses is guilt, a rare, but not unheard of, vulnerability that comes out when he’s tired enough to forget that Sam doesn’t care. “You can’t keep letting me get away with this shit. Can’t keep helping me.”

Sam looks up from his phone, temporarily distracted from his research, and tries to remember what he would have said when he could feel. “You have it more under control than most people would,” he offers, tries to modulate his voice in a way that he thinks will calm Dean down. It might actually be nicer than what his counterpart with a soul would say, because Dean’s doing a pretty piss-poor job of controlling it, and has from the beginning. Sammy never had as strong of a stomach for violence as Dean did, so the other Sam might actually be pretty repulsed by all this. But they’ve been over the lore. There’s nothing they can do to get rid of it, and he stopped trying to lie about that part and alchemise some optimism from thin air about a year ago; it made their relationship demonstrably worse, but Sam doesn’t mind. So damage control is all he can be bothered with right now.

Dean looks over, and for a split second there’s some actual softness in his eyes. And then the reflection of the phone screen lights up Sam’s face as he swipes to a new page, and Dean seems to remember that he’s not talking to the Sammy he wants to hear from, and looks back at the road. They don’t talk again until Missoula.

Sam gets the keys from the front desk while Dean waits in the car, since his brother still reeks of gasoline and iron. He slips the card into his pocket fast enough that the receptionist (who’s strung out on _something_ , god knows what) doesn’t see the blood that’s still under his fingernails, and slips her a fifty to take care of any questions she might have.

Sam showers first, Dean pounding on the door when he takes too long; Sam thinks he deserves to shower as long as he wants since it wasn’t his murder they were destroying evidence from, but he finishes up and steps aside. Dean takes at least three times longer in the shower, which obviously Sam doesn’t _care_ about, but he recognizes the hypocrisy in case he needs to bring it up and antagonize Dean over something. They don’t speak while they get ready for the night, Sam just putting on a fresh set of clothes since he doesn’t sleep, and Dean shoving his gasoline-stained jeans into the dumpster out front. 

“I fucking hate you,” Dean says suddenly, dropping the towel he was using to dry his hair onto the carpet, and Sam barely glances up from where he’s cleaning his gun at the table by the window.

“I know,” he says, reloads the magazine in his pistol. He admires the gun for a second, eyes taking in its sleek design and imagining what it would be like to _actually_ feel appreciation for the MK 23 instead of just knowing that it’s a good gun that kills things. He feels Dean’s glare on the side of his head the entire time he’s gazing at the gun, but doesn’t have any interest in glaring back. He doesn’t care about whatever pissing contest Dean wants to engage in before he sleeps for three hours and then wakes up from nightmares and insists they get back on the road. Sam wishes that the Mark of Cain made Dean a better hunter, and he guesses that sometimes it does, but mostly it makes him a strung-out headcase, especially when he’s fighting against the Mark. He lets the gun’s slide close with an aggressive _snap_.

 _Sammy_ never told Dean, but he’d liked the way that the mother-of-pearl on his Taurus matched, or at least echoed, the ivory on the handle of his brother’s Colt; another tally on the pathetically long list of ways sentimentality held Sam Winchester back. 

“Fuck you,” Dean says, _finally_ , and shuts off the light, leaving Sam in the dark. One of the beds squeaks as Dean climbs into it, Sam just turns on the flashlight on his phone and finishes putting away his gun cleaning kit, piece by piece. 

At one point he tried a little harder to imitate the old Sam, even after a hand was thrust into his core and found it empty, but it’s not really worth the effort. He knows Dean isn’t going anywhere. They both do.

**Author's Note:**

> this was! something! sophie came up with "okay what if moc dean and husk" and i went absolutely insane with it? i don't know why i couldn't stop writing this, it's super not my usual thing, but i guess it's here now! maybe i just needed to get my quota of dark, unnecessarily edgy fic out before i continued on with a fic where soulless sam is slightly less fucked up (which is to say this is COMPLETELY unrelated to patron saint and i am shamelessly promoing it here, i just like soulless sam a lot)
> 
> also i don't know where cas is in this but i believe firmly if sam hadn't prayed to him in the beginning of s7 he would have just kept on the path he was which was: maximum destruction before the leviathan destroyed him so. r.i.p i guess! per usual i'm @tube_ebooks on twitter


End file.
